


Marking Time

by Sue_Denham



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Not all coping mechanisms are healthy, prison fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:42:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28527168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sue_Denham/pseuds/Sue_Denham
Summary: ‘The whole place is locked down and controlled; every last movement is exact. She could time the clang of her food bowl to the millisecond if she had the mind to.’When the routine is finally broken; it’s how you react to it that matters.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Marking Time

**Author's Note:**

> So after watching Revolution of the Daleks, I got to thinking - probably too much - about how discipline would be maintained. The last paragraph wrote itself. I was an innocent bystander... sort of!

Each day repeats; one vanishing into the next with only the sterile repetitiveness of exercise, meals, and nominated sleep time to break them up. There are no guards to irritate, just the fellow inmates, and access to them is limited to a solitary hour a day. 

She makes her daily greeting to the cameras; she knows where they all are. Knows every last detail about the ones that line the monotonous route from her cell to the tiny exercise pen, where she is resigned to pacing the too-small enclosure; offering out quips and unreturned greetings to her fellow inmates. 

They would probably kill her if they got the chance, but the prison is good at that; offering up something only to make sure you understand you can never have it. See the person you’d give anything to get revenge on and know that they will always be so tantalisingly close, but remain just that arms reach away. Your thirst for revenge will forever remain unfulfilled. You will be left with a longing for something you’ll never achieve. 

She needs their hate; it took a few months to realise it; to understand the emotion for what it was. Every time they’re throwing out their empty threats or hurling themselves at the bars in an effort to get to her, she has the proof that she’s still alive and still matters. 

There is no escape; that’s what the prison wants you to believe. There are no guards, no chance for a mistake to be made; for someone to be tired or a little off their game. No-one to corrupt or persuade. The whole place is locked down and controlled; every last movement is exact. She could time the clang of her food bowl to the millisecond if she had the mind to.   
She’s tried everything she can think of to escape; sometimes employing the same tactic twice in case the first time was just bad luck. She gets precisely nowhere. The only thing it brings by way of reward — and she hates herself for thinking of it in those terms —is a break from the monotony. There are days that pass with no clang of the food bowl, or the lights are left on for long stretches of time. She doesn’t miss the food or need the sleep, but the routine of dividing time into precise segments is finally interrupted. These tiny changes to that routine are things she clings onto. 

She sees the light blinking, indicating that the exercise period is over. The pens around hers have been emptying out, and she is one of the last to leave. She trudges, because that’s what she does now, she trudges the twenty-five paces it takes to reach the next metal bulkhead. She intones the names of the cameras as she passes them; it’s all part of the routine, the ritual. This time, however, the bulkhead door she’s facing doesn’t open. She frowns; this is change. She feels her hearts quicken at the expectation of something different; even if that difference is only a delay in the opening of a door. An identical-looking bulkhead door at her left shoulder shrieks opens on rusted hinges. It reveals another bland corridor marked at regular intervals by security cameras, but these are not her security cameras. After months of nothing but the sight of her corridors, this is new. She steps through the opening, and the door slams down behind her with an echoing clang just as its twin at the end of the corridor opens. Three figures stand framed in the doorway. They wear the same red coveralls; they are prisoners here the same as her. 

She automatically takes a pace back, feeling the cold metal of the door through her clothing; scanning their faces; trying to see if she knows them from anywhere. There’s nothing; no hint she’s ever crossed paths with them, ever done anything that might put her in conflict with them.   
She straightens her shoulders and takes a pace forward; hoping they’ll be as surprised as she is. That hope is quickly dashed. They know why they’re here. They have purpose. There’s little space in the corridor; the three men brushing shoulders as they walk very deliberately towards her.

“Probably wondering what I’m doing here,” she tries to break the ice. “Think camera 39 had a bit of a meltdown. Either that or door 87 is on the fritz.”

The man in the centre simply smiles at her. There is no warmth in it that she can detect; his eyes locking onto her own and she realises, with a sinking feeling, that she knows exactly where this is heading.

“You don’t have to do this.”

The man, who she’s already decided is their de facto leader, tilts his head slightly to one side.

“Really? Well, if we want food then yes, we do.”

She looks around for options she already knows aren’t there.

“There’s nowhere to run.”

They close the gap and still, she has no answers. They’re crowding in on her now. The blond-haired man on the left reaches out, and she takes the opportunity to dodge and reach out a hand: catching him on the sweet spot on the neck and stopping him in his tracks. His colleague on the right reacts, and she moves for him next. He’s just that bit further away; it costs her that extra half a second to reach him. She’s nearly completed the move when a sickening punch to the stomach takes the air from her lungs. She’s ignored the man in the middle at her cost. The other two quickly recover their wits, and she struggles to recover her breathing as she feels hands clamping down on her wrists and shoulders; pinning her in place.

Flinching; she tries to turn away as the man she’d called out as their leader grabs her chin and forces her to look up at him.

“You broke the rules,” he tells her simply. “You break enough rules and there are consequences.”

“You do their work for them?” She strains against the two men holding her but to no avail.

“For time off my sentence? Yes.” He looks her straight in the eyes before releasing his hold on her chin and delivering the first of several full-blooded punches to her stomach.

* * *

Reality, when it returns, comes back in slow, painful steps. She’s aware of the burn of muscles before she’s aware of her location. It takes her at least ten minutes to re-orientate herself; ten minutes to open her eyes and realise that she is, somehow, back in her cell again. She has vague memories of what happened, but no recollection of returning.

Everything hurts. Her right eye refuses to open fully, and her head is pounding. Every part of her body seems to be sending messages back to her brain telling her that something is wrong. And she drinks in the details. Every last message, every last acknowledgement of a bruise or abrasion is something different from the long interminable months of sameness. She counts the damage to her ribs; counts the fractures one by one and takes in every last detail of the three that are broken.

The door to her cell doesn’t open the next day. The lighting stays on and the food bowl doesn’t appear, but she doesn’t miss them, doesn’t acknowledge the break in her routine as she would usually. She has something else to concentrate on. She tests her aching muscles and concentrates on the way her body is repairing itself. It’s not something she’s ever really acknowledged before and now it’s all-consuming.

  
On the third day, the door opens, and she dutifully follows the orders she’s given. She greets the cameras; the trudge replaced by more of a shuffle, and she keeps one hand wrapped around her ribs as though it will in some way help. She meets the eye of everyone in the adjoining pens. She drinks in their anger and throws back out the little retorts she knows will irritate them. She wears the bruises on her face with pride. She has made something different happen. It’s more than they’ve achieved. 

Her body repairs itself quickly and the monotony returns. There is once again only routine, only order. The hate from those around her isn’t hitting home in the way it did before; it’s lesser somehow. She starts again with the small acts of defiance; she refuses to leave her cell, refuses to walk through the doors at the time they command. And she waits… waits for the reprisals.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that got a little darker than intended!


End file.
